Before moving to Colorado, Breaking Bread founder Deuce Thevenow was a globe-trotting concert and event producer for artists such as deadmau5, Diplo, Ariana Grande and Calvin Harris. Today he’s figuring out how to set up a fully operational kitchen in the middle of a bison herd.
Seeking a lifestyle change, “I moved to Colorado three years ago and started going to a lot of farmers' markets, eating out at restaurants and also got into gardening,” he says. “And once I started doing [these] farm-to-table experiences…I loved it, talking with the farmers and learning about how they grew and where they grew and just learning more about the food rather than just ordering it off a menu.”
In 2019, he met chef Tajahi Cooke, a longtime fixture in the Denver hospitality scene who was the lead cook at Bacon Social House in 2016, sous chef at Block & Larder and executive chef of fast-casual concepts Biju’s Little Curry Shop and Mother Tongue in 2019. In 2022, Cooke started Supper Club at Freedom Street Social food hall in Arvada.
From left to right: Chef Brian, Deuce Thevenow, his wife, Jillian Chatoff Thevenow, and Tajahi Cooke.
Deuce Thevenow
It was at Supper Club that Thevenow first met Cooke; “[Supper Club] looked really good, and I just walked up to him and said, ‘I don’t know what this is, but I want to be invited to the next one,’” Thevenow recalls, joking that Cooke initially gave him the brush-off. But Thevenow got Cooke's number to stay in touch, hired him for a few private dinners and eventually brought up the idea of creating a traveling dinner party situated on farms and ranches around Denver
Cooke introduced Thevenow to close friend Rex Moore, who owns Rock River Ranches and its four bison herds spread across Colorado with his wife, Julie, and two adult sons. Originally, the ranch primarily supplied thirty to forty local restaurants with meat. When COVID hit, the family lost 80 percent of their business in one week. Their saving grace: a quick pivot to direct-to-consumer sales. When Moore posted a plea for support on Craigslist and his personal Facebook page, Coloradans stepped up and placed a month's worth of orders in three days.
Since then, Rock River Ranches has been fully committed to directly building a relationship with its consumers, which was why the Hudson location is a natural fit for Breaking Bread’s first dinner. Guests should expect more than just a meal: The experience will kick off with a farmers' market of local vendors including nonprofit partner Ag & Food Lab, which will be selling produce. Ag & Food Lab will also receive a portion of the ticket proceeds.
Moore will lead guests on a tour of the ranch, explain how the family uses sustainable rotational grazing practices and discuss the unique challenges of raising 31 bison that rotate through six different pastures across the state.
Along the tour, guests will taste two bison dishes, including what promises to be a showstopper: a spiced Thor’s Hammer roasted bison. “It’s a huge-ass piece of meat that I plan on smoking and marinating and rubbing down with some of the best dry-rub spices that I can put together,” Cooke says. “I’m already thinking of brown sugar and cardamom and coriander and cumin and crushed chilies and roasted garlic.”
The main event will be a five-course meal that highlights bison from Rock River Ranches, fruit from Ya Ya Farm & Orchard, as well as ingredients from many other Colorado growers and suppliers. “This [dinner] is something we want to keep specific to Colorado and make it community-driven. Our vegetables and meats and everything cooked is going to be sourced locally from Colorado, and [many] of the items that will be served will be from the farms themselves that are hosting the dinners,” Thevenow notes.
The menu for the Saturday dinner at the Hudson Rock River Ranch includes dishes such as charred carrots cooked in bison tallow and bison short ribs. Sunday’s menu at Ya Ya Farm includes an orchard take on mango sticky rice pearls, where “they’re actually going to be cooked in different juices from the orchard,” says Thevenow. “They soak the mango sticky rice and boil it in cherry juice, pear juice and apple juice.”
It was important for both Thevenow and Cooke to keep the experience affordable. At $149 per ticket, these events are more accessible than those of their competitors, such as Outstanding in the Field, which can easily cost double or triple that amount. “It should be available to everyone,” says Cooke. “I’ve always said that I want everyone from Martin Luther King to Cherry Creek at my events. I would love everyone; I want the whole fucking community to be a part of it.”
It’s especially exciting for Cooke to be a part of Breaking Bread, as he’ll be cooking for the first two dinners. “I haven’t done a dinner publicly in a while. We’ve just done a lot of private events over the last couple of years,” he says.
His wife, Danielle, adds, “What’s really great about this is that we’re really providing just an opportunity to connect, whether it’s through the [communal] table setting, as well as the fact that we’re really bringing people to where this food is grown and cultivated and cared for.”
For now, only two dinners are on Breaking Bread’s calendar, but everyone’s hope is to continue to expand to more farms, more events and more unique locations so that no two guest experiences will be the same.
For more information and to purchase tickets, visit letsbreakbread.co.
